Pain is a Moon Child’s best friend. Their first lover. Their greatest confidant. Long before our tongues ever taste the joys of blood, we have learned to quench our thirst on the dark wine of hurt.

- From A Primer for the Unbound

By Ashmi Al, High Lura of Dragoncorpse Moon Tower, 3362 S.R.

It’s comfortably dark here, with the overcast sky and the mountain itself blocking out what little sun breaks through. The trees and rising rock outside crowd close to the manor, which spreads upward along the peak rather than outward into the forested grounds. The householders close in around me.

A tall Lunarborn man dressed in black and gray takes my satchel for me, while a plump older Middling woman places a hand to my back to turn me toward the door. The others—a teenage Solarborn girl and a Lunar child who looks around ten—both keep their distance, watching me with wide eyes. Here to observe, not to greet. I stare back at them a moment, more than a little bemused. Their dresses are similar, made of the same sorts of expensive fabrics but in different colors and cuts, and they’re holding hands. Just like siblings of the same birthtype might.

Inside, the sun lanterns are dim and flickering, and everything is made of pitted wood and mountain stone. Blue-black fronds and fir needles batter the windows in the rushing wind, some of them bearing strange fruits. But the howl of the storm is muted in here, the walls built thick. The air is warm and scented with resin incense and alderwood smoke. A good sign.

I’ve heard that food cooked using sunlight is bland, but I’d assumed they’d resort to it on principle. I’d been quietly dreading it, even knowing it would make up less than a third of my diet going forward. Now that I’m Bound, it’s time to move past childish things like eating three solid meals a day. But I’m glad to think that, at least, some of the food I do eat might have flavor.

Introductions are made, and I learn that the Middleborn woman is the housekeeper, and her name is Ahjia Tulpa.

“But you may call me Zhama,” she says graciously, this being the more respectful variation of the Tusk word for “auntie.” Her high bun of loose gray hair wobbles as she speaks, stuck through with pins carved from antlers with chips of jade at the ends.

The Lunarborn man introduces himself as Bastren. The two who seem like siblings dart away down the hall before anyone can introduce them, skirt ribbons flowing after them like gilded tails.

“Don’t mind them,” sighs Zhama. “Like wild kittens, those ones. Skittish at first, but they warm up.”

If I weren’t raised in the tower, perhaps I might ask who they are. But I was, so instead I wait for the information to offer itself. Zhama and Bastren lead me up the stairs to a mezzanine floor, and then down a hall and into a broad, sun-powered lift. I’m reminded of the carriage as we sit down on the fur-strewn benches along its walls. Thoughts of that lead me to thoughts of my master, and it occurs to me what it is that feels so strange about this place.

The home of the War-Eater shouldn’t be like this. So welcoming. So…warm. Where does he keep his trophies of conquest? Why do his servants not cower and cast their eyes away?

“It’s a bit of a maze, this place” apologizes Zhama as we begin to move gradually upward. “But I’m sure you’ll get to know each other quickly enough.”

I let some of my confused interest show on my face, wondering if she’ll elaborate. She doesn’t, though she chatters away about some other essentials of life in the manor until our lift comes to a shuddering halt and we spill out into another long hall with many doors to either side of it. We stop at one at the far end and to the right, and it swings obligingly open for us.

There are many possible accommodations I’d been taught to expect of my future home. A pallet in my master’s room, or a cage beneath his bed. A sparsely furnished corner of a cellar, dungeon or attic. Perhaps a bunk in some shared servant’s quarters, or a tiny chamber the size of a closet.

I had never considered that I might be given something like this.

Staring around the space, I guess it’s long and wide enough to walk ten paces from end-to-end. But there’s only one bed—four-posted and large. The lamps are turned to their lowest setting, and a tiny fire of pinecones and cloudwood crackles in a hearth on the wall opposite. Bastren sets my satchel down on a stand beside the armoire before begging my leave and slipping quietly away.

“I’ll let you rest and settle in then, shall I?” Offers Zhama. I agree to this and she smiles—green eyes crinkled at the corners in a way that I’ve always liked because it’s so often genuine. “I’ll check up with you after I’ve looked in on the dinner preparations. But if you need anything in the meantime, just ask the house.”

“Oh, there is something,” I call after her, and she pauses at the door. Sometimes it’s worth it to break with training and ask. “Do you think the general will return in time for my whipping, and if not is there someone else who might perform it?”

She goes still, and complex emotions pool in her eyes. Pain, pity, hesitation.

“Oh, child. You don’t need to do that in this house, unless his Brilliance were to order it.”

I stare at her, and for a moment I lose control of my face, letting my lips fall open. “Don’t…need? But I—I just…“ confusion and frustration overwhelm me. That’s twice in one day I’ve lost my composure and stammered like a fool. My hands want to fly up to my hair, but I keep them still. “Is there no one who might do it? When will he be home?”

Her lips draw together in a tight line.

“There’s no knowing for certain when His Brilliance will return home once he’s been summoned to High Rook. It could be days, and it could be weeks. As to the whipping, you may ask Bastren, if you must—but know that no one here expects that of you.”

Urgent questions rise to my tongue, but this time I withhold them. Ask the house, she’d said. Well, I’ll wait until she leaves and do just that. Less shame in berating a house with questions than a person. I dip my head in ascent and acquiescence, and Zhama bustles off. The door swings shut behind her, and suddenly I’m face-to-face with the construct carving jutting out of it. The head, neck, and shoulders of a lion, with wings carved at either side of its base. Its luminous eyes seem to peer straight into my Ithos.

“At last we meet,” he says, and the clicking of his articulated jaw layers strangely with the rushing-wind sound of his voice. “Welcome, girl who was empress.”

Child. Girl. Will they always treat me so, because I’m small? Because I’m Reset?

I straighten my back to look down my nose at him, imagining for a moment I’m channeling some minute piece of my old self and immediately shuddering.

“My name is Vi,” I tell the house. “What is yours?”

The lion head’s brass eyelids blink, and then it laughs. An odd, hollow sort of sound. “I am called Manor Silvermane, and I have been the seat of the Khavad family for more than five hundred years. But you may call me House when we speak. Most do.”

“I’m honored to meet you, House. And grateful for your accommodations. Also, I have some questions.”

Again, it blinks. “With no offering made? Where are your manners, girl?”

“Forgive me. “ Instantly, I slip into my timid-rabbit mask—dropping my gaze to the floor as I extend my hand to the construct’s waiting jaws. They close around it, dull metal teeth pressing into my flesh without piercing it. My eyelids flutter and my knees weaken as the cool energy that lies dormant throughout my veins shimmers to life. As it gathers at my core and flows down my arm into House’s hungry maw.

One, two, three heartbeats. Its mouth swings open, releasing me.

“Interesting,” breathes the construct, seeming satisfied. “Your questions?”

I step carefully back from it, resisting the urge to rub my hand.

“If General Khavad will be gone for days or weeks, how am I to feed? What am I to do? Why did he not just take me with him?”

“Oh, all at once, then? Is this the etiquette of the moon towers?”

Some heat rises to my cheeks, but I hold steady. The house sighs.

“You will eat food in the master’s absence, mostly, apart from weekly blood rations from stores in the ice-cellar. You will spend time with different tutors and mentors, learning that which the master sees fit for you to learn. He did not take you with him because he has no use for you there, yet.”

His last statement stings and only brings more questions to mind, but it’s the first that has my voice rising with indignation. “Food? But I’m Bound!”

“Yes, but you can live almost entirely off that alone, when you must.”

“I’ll weaken. I won’t be able to draw in moonlight. And you just took some of it, too!”

“There is nothing more I can say of the matter.”

I want to curse. To kick the door and batter it with my fists. But instead I take a deep breath and allow myself one final question for the night.

“Where may I find Bastren?”

~*~

Pain sings through my flesh, reddens my vision. With each kiss of leather to my scar-crossed back, my mind grows clearer. I sag in my bindings as the tension flees my body. My flayed skin burns nicely.

“Enough?” Bastren calls from behind me, sounding hopeful.

“Yes, enough,” I sigh. “Thank you.”

As he draws in close to untie my wrists from their supports, there’s a sudden intake of breath. I don’t have to wonder why.

It’s the subtle moon-glow of my flesh, only visible close-up.

“How…?” He fumbles at my bindings, staring at my skin.

I shrug as best I can, savoring the bright flash of pain that blooms between my shoulder blades with even that small action.

“There’s something wrong with me, I suppose.”

Pain is meant to purge the moonlight, to prevent it from building up too much and overwhelming us. From driving us mad and dangerous. But for me it strengthens it, draws it to the fore and sets me to glowing.

They were at their wit’s end with me back at the moon tower, until finally they gave in and allowed me to learn the art of spinning moonlight into thread. It’s a skill typically reserved for moon children of noble families, but our High Lura had decent connections, and was able to get special permissions for me. Provided we tithe all the thread to the crown, of course.

But now that I’m free of the tower and untold days of blood-fasting lie ahead, I’ll do no spinning. I’ll bolster what power I have with pain, and bide my time until the general returns. Somehow I’m not sure which I thirst for more—the cold waters of his voice and that thunderstorm gaze, or the hot red nectar of his veins.

Faint disgust rises like watered bile at the back of my throat as I catch myself longing for that kin-killer, that devourer of armies. But it’s a predatory longing, I tell myself. Just the natural blood-hunger brought to life by my Binding. Bastren studies my face with worry and fascination in his sage-colored eyes as they dart back and forth between each of mine. Then he brings up a hand to smooth back a few errant locks of his auburn hair, and I notice his hand is shaking.

“I’m sorry that I asked this of you,” I say a few moments later as he re-laces the back of my dress for me, this time more loosely.

I hear the clinking of his many earrings as he shakes his head and turn to look at him. More hair slips loose of their bindings, catching in the serpentstone rings. His age is difficult to fathom, but in that moment he looks younger than he had before. Perhaps around my age.

“No, I understand your need. I’ve just…I’ve never been on this end of it.”

I nod, pouring genuine sympathy into my expression as I reach out to touch his arm and thank him again. As I pull away, I let my fingers travel lightly across the ridges of his glyph scars. There are so many of them, So many lessons taught, promises made.

He walks me back to my room, then, and I admit I’m not exactly sure why. It seems as though he simply enjoys my company, somehow, but I’m not sure how to trust that. He must have lived in a place far from my own in the past Realm, to be so unaffected by my face. But then it occurs to me that Zhama didn’t seem much put off by it, either. Perhaps it’s the make-up?

Aside from the few to whom I’ve been introduced, there are some others in the house as well. A few sophisticated, free-moving constructs and a handful of Middleborn staff—but they slip past us almost as if we don’t exist, carrying on with their duties.

“You can come to me again, for this or anything else,” says Bastren when we arrive at my bedroom door. “It felt good, to be of service to one of my own.”

Then he sketches me a shallow bow and leaves me to myself.

Zhama has my meal sent directly to my room that night, and I’m relieved to dine alone. The food is delicious, after all—boar belly cured in smoke with a thick porridge of fragrant rice colored by spices and bits of nut and dried fruit. But it’s nothing to the memory of my master’s blood.

I wonder when I’ll get my next taste.

~*~

I’m dreaming of plucking fruit full of golden nectar from a tree fed by fresh corpses when the amplified voice of the house roars me awake. I bolt upright, sweating and alert.

I turn to look over at the lion head as it finishes its wake-up call.

“Has the master returned?”

Inwardly, I chide myself for jumping straight to questions—but in my barely-conscious state, and with memories of his blood flickering at the edges of my consciousness, my self-control is weak. The construct actually laughs at that, an echoing chuckle like the rolling of thunder.

“No, girl, not hardly. The Earthenfolk are on the march, approaching the southern border. He’s to ride out in advance of reinforcements to join the local regiment.”

My stomach sinks. I clutch at the blankets, not caring if the house can see.

“How long until he comes back?”

Another low curl of laughter. “A month. Perhaps more. Now rise and ready yourself. You’ll be expected in the dining hall soon.

Another month, perhaps more. Yet again I command my hands to stillness when all they want is to tangle themselves into my coal-black waves and pull. It’s not right, that I should have to go without his fresh blood so soon, after having only one tiny taste of it. Not fair, that I should be newly Bound and freshly addicted only to be left with nothing but food and rations of old blood. Just last night, I’d thought fondly of woodfire cooking, enjoyed my pork and rice well enough. But today, knowing it’s all I’ll have—this pale substitute for sustenance—it’s unacceptable. Something in me breaks for just a moment. Or clicks into place.

“I won’t have it,” I say, and my words have the ring of command. My voice is not my voice—but is. “I won’t be left behind. I will go with him.”

The construct doesn’t burst into laughter, as I’d expected in spite of the confidence ringing from my lips. It’s silent for a moment, radiant eyes thoughtful.

“You will join him on the battlefield soon enough, girl. But not today. Not until you’re ready.”